


what we chiefly need

by elisela



Series: the trees of vermont [22]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Baking, M/M, Married Life, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26802655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/pseuds/elisela
Summary: Okay, it really starts like this: Eddie is seven years old and finally deemed old enough to graduate from the tortilla press to the stove, balanced up on a stool with a wooden spatula in his hand. There’s an old cast iron pan heating up in front of him, a stack of raw tortillas pressed by Adriana to his left, and a woven tortilla basket to his right.Sophia has been saying that the tortillas are the most important job for years, and Eddie takes his job very seriously. He’d watched carefully as abuela showed him what to do, but now it’s up to him to finish the job, and—“This is why men don’t cook, Edmundo,” his dad says that night when the dark brown, too crunchy tortillas are passed around and mostly avoided. “Leave it to your sisters.”
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: the trees of vermont [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790356
Comments: 13
Kudos: 182





	what we chiefly need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/gifts).



> For Chapel, because I traumatized her with a breakup and promised to make it better.

It starts like this:

“God,” Buck moans, mouth stuffed full of toast. “ _God_. This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“You said that about the steak last week,” Eddie says, raising an eyebrow. “And the strawberry basil balsamic ice cream at the spring fair the week before that. And—” Buck shoves the bread in his open mouth and Eddie bites down automatically, and, well—yeah, it’s really good. It’s thick, crunchy and spongy at the same time, the perfect line between airy and dense, a wonderfully sour taste on his tongue, sweet honey butter dripping through the air bubbles and coating his mouth with a drop of heaven. “Okay, it’s really good,” he says.

“I’m never eating anything else again,” Buck says as he looks around the cafe, locking eyes with the teenage waitress who had blushed and stumbled over her notepad when she had seen him and waving her over. “Hey, can we get more of this toast? What bread do you use? It’s amazing.”

“It’s from the bakery down the street,” she says. “You want a full loaf to take home?”

Buck’s eyes light up.

Okay, it really starts like this: Eddie is seven years old and finally deemed old enough to graduate from the tortilla press to the stove, balanced up on a stool with a wooden spatula in his hand. There’s an old cast iron pan heating up in front of him, a stack of raw tortillas pressed by Adriana to his left, and a woven tortilla basket to his right. 

Sophia has been saying that the tortillas are the most important job for years, and Eddie takes his job very seriously. He’d watched carefully as abuela showed him what to do, but now it’s up to him to finish the job, and—

“This is why men don’t cook, Edmundo,” his dad says that night when the dark brown, too crunchy tortillas are passed around and mostly avoided. “Leave it to your sisters.”

Eddie hasn’t gotten any better since then, not that he’s tried all that hard. There was only a period of a few months in which he hasn’t had anyone around to do the cooking for him, because he’d gone from his mom and abuela to the military and back to his mom and Sophia, muddled through the first few months in Vermont with poorly cooked food heavily supplemented with take-out, deli containers, and Bobby’s cafe. He doesn’t think about it too much, because Buck likes cooking and Eddie likes eating things that aren’t undercooked or mushy, and is perfectly happy to be the one who goes grocery shopping and does all the clean up. Buck occasionally recruits him for prep work now that Chris is out of the house, but for the most part, Eddie’s kitchen adventures are limited to sandwiches and rummaging through the refrigerator for snacks. 

But there are times when Buck looks so— so over the moon about the littlest things, like crispy bacon and perfectly runny eggs, a slice of sourdough toast topped with sweet butter, and Eddie’s heart aches with the desire to be the one to give that to him. Except Eddie’s long given up trying to do anything like that, and he’s not even sure where to start. But bread—bread can’t be that hard, can it? Abuela’s made it all his life, and he remembers the feel of sticky dough in his hands, flour puffing up and coating his forearms as he kneaded pan de muerto every October, taking off a pinch to taste when it turned tacky under his palms and watching it spring back. 

Yes, he’s fairly certain he can manage a loaf of bread. 

Three days later, he realizes that he’s completely out of his depth. “It’s like a rock,” he says in dismay. He can hardly get the knife through it. The crust is several shades past golden, it’s way too flat, and he’s pretty sure the middle isn’t actually cooked at all.

“Send me a picture,” Sophia says, and he puts her on speaker while he does; a few seconds later, she bursts out laughing. “Were you making bread or a weapon?”

“I don’t know why I called you,” he complains, picking up the—well, he’s not entirely sure it can be called bread—and throwing it into the trash can.

“Did you actually let this rise?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, except—“It didn’t really, though? I covered it and let it sit but it only got a little puffier.”

“You need to let it double, Eddie,” Sophia says patiently. “However long it takes.”

Later that night, sprawled against Buck on the couch, one hand in his husband’s hair, he opens his email to see if his editor has sent back the first three chapters of his next book and is instead greeted with an email from King Arthur Baking School confirming his registration for a four-day Bread: Principles and Practice course. 

_I might have had plans_ , he texts to Sophia, and tries not to be irritated when she sends back a gif of someone laughing hysterically. 

He’s pretty sure his hands are sweating. 

There’s nothing on the sleek, wood tables, nothing for him to distract himself with or hide behind when one of the instructors turns to him and says, “what brings you here?”

“My husband’s usually the one who bakes,” he says after a moment, “and when I tried to bake bread at home it—didn’t go well. My sister tried to be helpful and signed me up for this.”

To his relief, no one teases him; he’s too used to Buck and his family’s gentle way of making fun of him and he doesn't know what to expect from this class, but the instructor just nods and continues along. They start off making the dough for their first loaf right away, and he listens and takes notes in the provided notebook about water temperature and looks carefully at the examples of yeast they provide, trying to commit the correct one to memory, scribbling down the difference between too-hot and too-cold and just right. 

The kneading comes easily as well, and it’s slightly embarrassing how he feels a flush of pride come to his cheeks when the instructor praises his technique and compliments the perfect springiness of the dough. He doesn’t remember the last time someone said anything other than “it’s okay” or “it was a good try,” and it’s … nice. 

He carries the glow all the way home. 

There are still some issues—he mixes up the weights of the sugar and salt in one loaf (how, he doesn’t know), uses water that’s too hot to bloom his yeast and his dough over-proofs—but overall he does well, bringing home baguettes and french bread and a rustic, garlic studded round loaf until Buck looks at him suspiciously on the last day and asks what the bread obsession is. 

“Just a new bakery in Norwich,” he says, shrugging. “I’ve been going there to write.” It’s not _exactly_ a lie; he writes down recipes and instructions and advice—but he doesn’t want to tell Buck, not yet. 

Getting all the supplies to make things at home is harder; Buck is territorial about his kitchen space, fussing over the perfect placement of pots and pans, narrowing his eyes when Eddie puts the blender back in the wrong spot after Friday night milkshakes. Eddie throws out the old loaf pans that he’d brought all the way from Texas and had used exactly once to make meatloaf and replaces them with new, heavy weight steel and aluminum pans, and goes a little overboard at the King Arthur shop attached to the bread lab on his last day. He ends up storing everything in the attic, tucked away in a plastic tote that’s half-full of Chris’ winter gear. 

And then he waits. 

Baking in a lab with three instructors is much less intimidating than baking at home, where he once smoked out the kitchen because he hadn’t thought to put a pan underneath the gruyere cheese bread when he’d tossed it in the oven to warm without realizing that the grease from the cheese would drip. And Eddie has trouble with getting ahead of himself sometimes; he wants to make something amazing for Buck, something that makes his eyes flutter closed and his lips part, something that makes him proclaim once again that it’s the greatest thing he’s ever eaten, and he’s pretty sure a plain loaf of bread isn’t going to get him that. 

Summer is turning to fall by the time Eddie finally decides to attempt to make sourdough bread; Buck’s heading up north to salvage boards from an old barn and is staying overnight, which gives Eddie enough time to buy a sourdough starter and try to make something decent out of it. He has to temper his impulse to approximate measurements and to be impatience with the feeding process—spending six hours waiting for bubbles to appear in the bowl is not his idea of a good time, but he does it once, twice, and then a third time for good measure, waking up at 2:00am to carefully weigh out the necessary amount of starter, flour, and water. 

His chest aches with anxiety when he wakes up and worries his way through mixing together the ingredients and kneading the bread; he goes for a run on the trail while it’s rising to clear his head and feels a thrill run through him when he gets home to see the dough has sufficiently risen. He shapes the loaves the best he can, makes deep slashes through them, and heads upstairs to shower while they bake. 

Buck’s standing in the kitchen when he goes back downstairs, sitting up on the island, watching the oven with a curious look on his face. 

“You’re back early,” Eddie says, and the disappointment that stems from not being done in time to surprise Buck must show in his tone because Buck frowns. 

“I can leave again,” he offers, “but not until I get some of whatever’s in there.” He reaches out when Eddie gets close and pulls him in, sliding his arms around Eddie’s neck and kissing him, all lips and softness; Eddie can hear how Buck breathes him in when he tucks his face in towards Eddie’s shoulder. “I missed you.”

He slides a hand up to Buck’s neck and squeezes, scratches his fingertips through the short hair and turns his head to press a kiss against his husband’s cheekbone. “I could have gone with you,” he says, and he feels Buck’s smile against his bare shoulder.

“You would have just complained about being free labor,” Buck says. “But—I like it, sometimes—being lonely when I’m away from you.”

Eddie thinks about teasing him, but he knows what Buck is trying to say, knows the pleasant ache of loving Buck so much he misses him after just one night to himself, the way his heartbeat steadies when he sees him again. “I wouldn’t complain about being free labor if you didn’t always insist on making me do free labor,” he says instead, and Buck pokes his side before he straightens up.

“I’d drag you upstairs and give you an advance on your next labor payment but your timer is about to go off,” Buck says, grinning. “What’s that, anyway?”

“Sourdough,” he says, and all the anxiety floods back in. It _looks_ okay from here, under the yellow glow of the oven light, and it smells good, but his first loaf all those months ago had smelled good, too, and he still remembers the disappointing, dense weight of it in his hands. “I wanted to surprise you—I took this class, back in May, Sophia signed me up for it—I just wanted to make something for you, for once, that wasn’t a complete disaster.”

“Eddie,” Buck says softly; the timer goes off, but Eddie looks at his husband’s face for a moment longer, soft eyes and sweet smile, affection shining through his face. He disentagles himself long enough to pull away and take the bread loaves out of the oven, pleased to see that the crust is close enough to the color he had achieved during his class, and deposits the tray onto the stovetop. 

Buck’s arms slide around his waist, mouth against the shell of Eddie’s ear. “Can we try it now or do they need to cool down?”

He glances at the recipe and shakes his head. “Now’s fine,” he says; he offers the knife to Buck, but Buck shakes his head, so Eddie holds a bit of a breath as he cuts through the end, careful to make the thick slices that he knows Buck prefers. A small amount of steam escapes as he works, the bread hot against his fingers, but it looks good, and he laughs when Buck tears a piece apart and shoves it into his mouth without butter or anything else.

“ _Eddie_ ,” Buck groans, and—

It’s _good_. It’s not as good as what he made with help, but it’s slightly tangy and airy and the crust is firm under his teeth, and it might just be a loaf of bread but he feels a strong sense of pride as he chews through it. He turns to face Buck and grins, popping another piece in his mouth. “Not bad, huh?”

Buck casts a longing look over his shoulder, then shifts his gaze back to Eddie. “I’m really torn right now,” he says, “between carrying you upstairs to enthusiastically show my appreciation and stuffing that entire thing in my mouth.”

Eddie laughs. “I can think of better uses for your mouth,” he says, and Buck’s lips purse together for a moment like he’s trying not to laugh before his hands start tugging at the waistband of Eddie’s shorts and he pushes Eddie back against the countertop, moving him slightly away from the stove, and sinking to his knees.

“Love to hear them,” Buck says, looking up at him from under his lashes, “don’t leave a single detail out.”


End file.
